A new Obama jobs program coming?

Robert Reich is hanging on to Hope. He expresses it in his blog post, The President's Bold Jobs Bill (Maybe) 08/17/2011. Obama is talking up a jobs program that he could use to draw a sharp contrast to the Republicans in 2012. Reich goes through the motions of suggesting what a meaningful program might look like.

But he knows that caution is demanded as least as much as Hope:

The President is sounding like a fighter these days. He even says he’ll be proposing a jobs bill in September – and if Republicans don’t go along he’ll fight for it through Election Day (or beyond).

That's a start. But read the small print and all he's talked about so far is extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits (good, but small potatoes), ratifying the Columbia and South Korea free trade agreements (not necessarily a job-creating move), and creating an infrastructure bank.

If the last year is any guide, only a small-scale and largely useless proposals like this will be all he comes up with. As Reich notes, "Some of the President's political advisers have been pushing for small-bore initiatives that they believe might have a chance of getting through the Republican just-say-no House."

And the already modest job measures he proposes will come packaged in some way with his Grand Bargain to cut Social Security and Medicare, thus kick-starting the phaseout of both programs. Then, whatever constructive jobs-creating elements of the plan are there, Obama will bargain away 95% of it to the Republicans, before they kick him in the face and say NO anyway.

Tags: barack obama, robert reich